Realm of the Imponderable

RDOC #38

Thanksgiving!!!
Tripped over to St paul to visit Savitri overt thanksgiving last week. It was a fun experience; my first true american thanksgiving dinner, hosted by Tom's (Savitri's husband) family. There's one things about these guys, it's that they really know how to do their turkey. And everything else, of course. (Those of you who don't know who Savitri is, she's a friend I've known for as long as I can remember. She used to come along on our regular camping trips.)

And what trip to the twin cities of St Paul and Minneapolis would be complete without a pilgrimmage to the Mall of America? It's the biggest mall in the US, with a Snoopyland themepark in the center and 3 levels of insane shopping madness. As expected, very few of the shops really interested me. I did get a set of juggling balls and scrutinized Wizards of the Coast, among a few other shops there. I think if it weren't just Zhi'an and me, we'd have probably gone there everyday for two or three days and still not seen it all; our style is just run past everything ans stop only if something really interests us or we need something. And then again even just doing that it took the whole day.

Savitri's one year old son, Arjuna, has developed a penchant for throwing things around. The noiser the better. Needless to say, I was woken up on the first day at the untimely hour of 8 in the morning by all the thumping and was greeted by a cheerful Savitri and blueberry waffles.

There's only one sore point in the trip; that's the Amtrak ride there. In 5 days I heard two stories of Amtrak trains getting delayed by more than 10 hours due to various reasons. Fortunately I wasn't on one of those delayed trains, but I can imagine how the passengers felt. The train back was a modest 3 hours late, which seeing what they're capable of, seems to be pretty good time.

That's that for thanksgiving... I wonder if I'll do the same thing again next year?

I've added some stuff to my other page; Check it out

tata....